April - GTD and Toodledo #12: Breaking the system

Try as I might, I haven't been able to overcome a problem, I haven't fundamentally stayed in the styem; rather, I've relied on a notepad file that I can open with a few keystrokes and the superfast entry of a few lines of text.

When I have something new, I simply insert it where it goes in the priority list.  There are some clear positives to this method, namely speed and... okay, there's one positive.  Speed.  Tools whose only virtue is speed are pandering to laziness, however, which brings me to the downside.

The downside is that the notepad only contains the things I put in it right at the moment, and when I did a minor desktop icon cleanup the other day, this happened:

I know it's small.  I didn't want to show my desktop icons, but here's the gist of what you see.  I had a desktop with lots of icons.  I drug them around into groups before moving them to where they go, and the group in the lower left shows 5 notepad files - notepad files of the same kind that I'm talking about as my 'emergency' files.  This means that not only do I have a 'current' notepad file which isn't one of these, but there are 5 other files, containing what one could only assume were the most important activities I could be working on at the time - relegated to the status of ignored desktop crap.

Want to know the scary thing?  I actually put it as a line item in my current notepad to review those old notepad files to make sure there's nothing forgotten.  It would be a safe bet to assume there ARE forgotten items that will elicit a loud "D'oh!" from me when I read them.

So - I'm NOT getting the GTD benefits when I do this.

Not that we've looked at the ugly sympton, what's the root cause?

I was using a system proffered by a Toodledo power user in the forum, with folders indicating the GTD elements of inbox, action, waiting, etc. and Stars indicating next actions, applied only to actions.  The original scenario I sought to emulate used custom searches for next actions.  I did this but found that there were too many next actions for me to comprehend consciously, the very problem which GTD seems to avoid,  and occasionally there were clients, etc. for which I had NO next actions for certain time periods.

I added tags and made lots of custom searches but this meant I had to look at all the searches.

Hmmm.. both scenarios still had me using notepad and receiving no benefits.  So, I culled the next actions back from the things I could to next to the things I WOULD do next.  This reduced the number, but at this time, remember I had custom searches for many areas.  When I ditched the custom searches (AFTER having culled the next actions), I found a manageable list.  WHOOOOOOOO!!!!!

So, if I had followed instructions, ostensibly, I would have saved time.  This isn't the case however - it was a matter of needing to try it in earnest to really understand the shortcomings personally to be able to make the plan work.  I had to feel the pain of the personal evolution.  This is indeed something that Toodledo tell you, essentially in the deceptively simple advice to 'try it out and experiment'.  But maybe I'm thick and just had to experience it myself.

So now, the next key was using tags as the sort priority and getting intimate with the collapse function.  This, miraculously, gives me a project list.  Who knew?  Probably lots of people.  But again, I had to do it to really 'get it' and I've found this to be a common thread running through the GTD story of many successful users.






Lessons:
(again) must avoid temptation to stay in system
Project list is attainable when sorting by tags and collapsing.
Collapsing is a great way to keep everything visible but not overwhelming
I'm aware that with all this I haven't actually talked about doing work, and I'm still concerned that this process, though definitely progressing in effectiveness, will be something that I effectively move from the development phase of into the doing phase.  I get secretly worried that I'll work out the perfect system and still just not feel like working, but I really don't think this will be the case.  I enjoy working, I just don't enjoy the fear of forgetting something or being overwhelmed in minutiae.

30 days with GTD and Toodledo

This is what its all base on, BTW, David Allen's Getting Things Done.  I listen to the audio instead of turning pages - it's a great way to make useful time of my commute, and unlike novels, I enjoy listening to these kinds of books more than once - making the purchase worthwhile for me.  Borrow a copy if you can and talk to that person for tips!

April - GTD and Toodledo #11: Inbox Zero tip

We're getting somewhere now.  I've had a few days of overwhelming workload - things that didn't get done over the past few weeks are screaming for attention and getting it.  Yikes!  I am whittling down my out of system work; meaning, more and more of my task management is actually happening in process.

Inbox Zero tip:
As I am reading my email, I want to erase or file the contents of many of these. Following the general GTD idea that every email is either an action, project, something I wait for, reference or trash... I have two new tricks.

5 minute rule enforcement.  

This concept isn't invented by me, but perhaps my hyper literal approach is.  I am using an online timer called Apimac, an awesome Mac Timer App. So, there is no accidentally stretching 5 minutes into a hour.  I have the timer running with a 5:00 countdown in giant numbers and running on top.  I glance at it periodically and it helps me keep the pace.  As I was clearing my inbox, I was tempted to spend more time on things, but killed them when the timer had a few seconds left.

The key here is that 5 minutes becomes a (wasted) hour when we aren't rationally, explicitly making the choice to spend that hour on that task. When it stretches a minute at a time we aren't seeing the hour, just the tantalizing promise of some fun or knowledge that would justify the jaunt.  Usually doesn't happen.  The timer has power.

Forced accountability.

Before I archive an email that I plan to act on ( I use gmail, so archiving isn't deleting ), I put the item into Toodledo first.  I literally draft the response to the person who sent me the note but don't send it, then I put it in Toodledo, then I send it.

1.
Bill, thanks for the content for your atomic horseradish site.  I can't process it right now but wanted to let you know I have received it and I'll have the new site up in a week or so.

2.
I put the item into Toodledo, using a convention of 'subject line' and (date) for capturing the email subject and date.

3.
I go back and hit send; then archive the email.

This way... the inbox in clear, the task is accounted for, and I couldn't get screwed up if I'm interrupted!

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #10: for Business and/or Personal life?

Yesterday I spend a good deal of time tuning up my GTD and Toodledo systems, with some fairly significant discoveries, primarily:

- Keep my Next Actions realistic - cull it down
- Realize that this 'objective' system has gray areas and accept it
- I can leave "finish to start" triggers for myself inside a task to emulate project management

It's not the system, it's me
As I'm going along, I'm realizing that the learnings that have the most value are usually about my perspective on things and not about the GTD system or Toodledo's functionality.  Both of these are powerful and flexible.  What a newsflash - it's ME that must adapt.  (Just like every area of life.)

What's a project?
Today's lesson so far has been regarding where the boundaries of a task-management system really are.  I think most people consider project management for work only.  And 'work' projects can tend to be larger than home projects... or are they?  Depends.

If you're comparing the construction of a building to a home project like remodeling a room, yeah it's bigger in an absolute sense.  But, bigger in an absolute sense has no bearing on what actually matters to a person - the room remodel might be much more significant to how you feel on a moment to moment basis.

Getting GTD.  No, I mean getting it
.The point of this is that the criteria for what constitutes a project might be pretty darn small.  Yes, this is not a new element to GTD, GTD acknowledges this and promotes the idea fully.   However, getting into GTD requires (at least for me) the quantum jump of understanding of these minor 'A-Ha' moments into major 'Oh, Wow....' moments only through personal experience.  Academically I understood it right away, but I didn't really get it until much later.  Then I got it.  You'll know.

Business or Personal
Here on Sunday morning, my day started with my 3 year old crawling on me at 6:15 telling me about a bug he found and asking for pancakes and a story.  I wasn't really ready for the day yet but my day was jolted into being without my involvement.

The point is that GTD is all about staying in a defined process and this was no defined process.  Even though I could wake up and ostensibly work through whatever Sunday's priorities were, it didn't happen that way.  Between me, my 3 and my 5 year old, there were many different agendas for the morning, including when to eat, when to dress etc.  There was schedule-free, complete randomness for a few hours.  Frankly, it spun me out.

Why?  I have a lot on my plate, and it's sometimes hard to just be.  I hadn't planned this time out and it was hard for me to go from structured, production time (or at least time that intends to be structured and productive) to time that's profoundly random and unstructured.  I got into a tailspin and changed my mind about 10 times regarding the actions of the day.

By the time mid-morning rolled around, I had to get on to some firm obligations and I was not in the right frame of mind to work productively.  I decided to take some time to chill and relax before working. So, where's the GTD connection?  The first part of my day, the few hours I spend with my boys while their mom sleeps in, didn't even have so much as a backdrop of clear intention associated with it.  Not even a decision to accept the randomness or commit to leisure time!  My GTD system, with projects, actions, next actions, someday maybe items and all the related structure gives me a consistent context that my mind can sync to and get rolling.  I'm thinking this is one of the major unarticulated functions of GTD - a context to sync to that becomes familiar, easy and automatic.

Even though I've had as many weekends as weekdays in my life and they make up the lion's share of my uncommitted time, they receive MUCH less forethought.  This is bass-ackwards.  Railing against the knee-jerk reaction to keep my free time unstructured is actually quite smart; it is, in fact, the time that I should have the most structure on because that's the most fun part, the part that I really want to enjoy.

Lesson:
Apply the same GTD principles to my free time as my work time.

By way of example, some of the options for Sunday were to work in the garage (cleaning), do yard work (weeding, planting), play at the park, or go for a bike ride.  With a committee of 3, there was anything but consensus and we waffled.  I waffled.  I'm the grown up so it's my job.  Waffling extolls a high price of the waffler and the waffled.  Suckola energy drain.

I'll have a plan for next weekend.

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #9 (postscript): GTD Cheating

After I posted the last bit, I was about to close up the computer for the day and spend the rest of the time with my family.  As I'm getting ready to unplug the trusty MacBook, I started dragging the open, unsaved instances of notepad from the 2nd monitor... these are various to-dos that I didn't put into TD.

Hmmm..

I did this GTD cheating on purpose with full knowledge and guilt of my GTD sin.  However, I told myself that this self-awareness made it ok; it would curtail itself in due time as the related habits are strengthening. I believe this too...

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #8: Culling Next Actions & Gray areas

I had a massive distraction to look at another organization tool.  I temptation to which I temporarily succumbed.  After a quick review, I found that the seductive surface simplicity was a promise of simplicity but that doesn't appear to fit my needs.  My to do's aren't so very simple to organize.

The real GTD with Toodledo work today was culling my next actions.

Even though there are many things that I can do, say for my client that sells vertical blinds (shout out), there is really only 1 of those that I'm going to actually do next.  Sounds simple, but as any online-tool-embracing-productivity-geek would tell you, it ain't simple.  "Next Action" sounds like a simple principle, but does it mean:

Something that I actually can do next if I choose to, i.e., there are no predecessors or other tasks that must be completed first, no barriers at all?  This is, to my understanding, the proper GTD definition.

However...

Among say 5 pre-emininent projects for a client, and 10 more behind that, there is only ONE next action that I actually will do next.

The difference is the difference between a task I can do next and a task I will do next.  (Alternatively, it could be a task I should do next vs. will, but I'll ignore that complexity and assume I do what I should.)

The difference in play is that one list is much (much) bigger than the other.  The former list is indigestibly long, and the latter is very digestible.  Result?  Culling from the former to the latter produced a huge increase in the peace of mind associated with the classic GTD clean sweep.

New Problem:
So the obvious downside is that culling the Next Actions, identified by stars, effectively loses some of the intelligence associated with the tast data.  Now, when I finish a task for a client, I need to figure out another one.  This either prompts the need for another review or promotes working on the wrong thing somehow.  Like many things in GTD, despite the formulaic, process oriented approach, there are still many subjective gray shades to adapt to, and this is one that I'm now brought to.  So, I did two things:

- Leave a few starred actions, or at least break from the rule of one that I implied earlier
- In some cases I left a trigger in one task to another, like a soft-link successor.  In project management parlance, this is like establishing a finish to start relationship, but without a hard link of any kind.  We'll see how this goes.

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project